Greensburg Salem School Board moves to reduce livestreaming only to voting meetings

The Greensburg Salem School Board will only livestream its voting meetings, following board action Wednesday night.

The board voted 6-3 in favor of reducing its livestreaming to one of its two monthly meetings. Board members Lynn Jobe, Kacey Byrne-Houser and Emily Miller opposed.

This is the first time the board has established a policy for livestreaming meetings — a practice that came about during the covid-19 pandemic. The livestream was meant to assist those who did not feel comfortable attending the board’s socially distanced in-person meetings when the school reopened classrooms, said Superintendent Ken Bissell.

Audio is recorded during each meeting to assist in documenting minutes.

Because district staff are not always available to operate the livestream, some board meetings have not been available virtually, Bissell said.

“There is no recording this evening, because we have staff that have to be serving kids in the community,” he said.

“Administration and the board have taken hits and shots that they were hiding things or not being transparent. Nobody has ever said that to me directly,” he said. “It’s usually come out on social media and other platforms that I find, in my opinion, cowardly.”

Board members tabled a vote on livestreaming during their Feb. 12 meeting, discussing the matter further last week — including the low level of attendance the livestream has drawn in the past year.

Bissell confirmed the same group of four or five people typically watch the livestreamed meetings.

Perhaps use students?

District administrators would like to compile a team of students to operate the livestream at both of the board’s monthly meetings in the future, Bissell said.

“We will commit to (livestreaming) the voting meetings,” he said, “and we will commit to buiding a team. We will commit to looking at students and how we can increase our streaming capabilities for the meetings.”

Miller said she would rather have waited to approve a livestreaming policy until the district had a student team in place to operate the equipment.

“If we stick with the policy and then work to build a team, possibly with students and then — once that was in place — adapt the policy,” Miller said, “there would be greater consistency moving forward.”